Reflections

Believe it or not, I have never owned a Mac. I know, it sounds pretty crazy (if you are a mac user it does, anyway), but I have always just ended up using Window’s-based PCs. I have always considered getting a mac, but early on was turned away by having to choose between a mac world, and a PC one. Then, when it became easy to open windows files within a mac, I was turned away by the price. So, when I started the Fully-Employed MBA program at the UCLA Anderson School a little less than a year ago, I decided to buy a Sony Vaio laptop.

This is the second Sony Vaio I have owned, and I was excited to load it with Vista, Office 2007, and all sort of other closed and open-source programs I have become accustomed to using throughout the years. I really was very excited to have a new toy. After using that laptop for a while, I began to discover some of the quirks that come with Vista, and some of the random crashes as I pulled all of my old macros forward into Excel, or just used a sequence of key-strokes or clicks that Vista did not like. But in general, I was pretty happy with the laptop, though I become increasingly nervous that it would just stop working one day, leaving me stuck before a final exam or final paper that was loaded on it.

After I started class, I noticed that a lot of my classmates had MacBooks or PowerBooks. I didn’t think much of it, but slowly noticed that these people really did love their macs. As a long-term, power PC user, you are given to thinking of macs as only good for those “creative” people (it is very sad that we don’t think people in business should be “creative”, but that’s a topic for another post which will be coming soon). These mac users in my class were not necessarily “creatives”, including people who were programmers, lawyers, finance professionals, and many others. After hearing about all the things they loved about their macs, and covering up for the little quirks of my Vista Vaio, I started to get a bit jealous of their ease and confidence in their computer.

And so it was with this all in mind that, still vowing to use that Vaio for the next two years while I am in school, I decided to buy a brilliantly white MacBook to see if I should make the switch to mac, or if I should just keep both running for the near future. I am actually writing this post on my brilliantly white yet-to-be-named MacBook, and even though I have only been using it for only five days, I am quickly able to see why people love their macs.

The niceties I have noticed as a new Mac owner

1. It really doesn’t crash. Sure, I’ve owned it for less than a week, but it really does feel a lot less quirky than my Vista laptop did, even from the first day.

2. This is a really power-conscious laptop. I am comfortable going for 4 hours without batteries, and could probably eek out quite a bit more if I really needed to. My Vista Vaio laptop, even with the extended battery that wreaks havoc on the once-sexy form factor, I am lucky if I can get much past 3 hours. And, again, that is with the rather expensive extended battery.

3. Though it takes about the same time to go to sleep, the mac log-in dialog box appears almost immediately after I open the screen back up. It really is rather amazing, especially compared to my Vista Vaio, which has seen me trying to look busy doing something else as a mac user sits next to me, staring at my laptop, wondering why it is taking so long to wake up.

4. When it is asleep, it doesn’t eat through all the charge the batteries have to offer. True, the mac does go through about 1% each hour or two while sleeping, but my vaio would go through at least double that, and would be sluggish when first waking up from a 6+ hour slumber (which means it’s pretty much sluggish every morning).

5. They thought of all the little things. The magnetic plug that detaches if someone trips over it, saving you from having to scrape the pieces of your laptop off the dirty floor, is sheer genius. I mean really, brilliant simplicity. The fan’s intake and exhaust in the back of the laptop, leaving the bottom sealed so that you don’t suck crumbs and dust into the bottom of the machine and don’t melt your legs when, god forbid, you put your laptop on your lap; another act of design brilliance.

6. Thought I don’t like the somewhat plastic look of the white one as much as I like the black one, it really is quite striking. Apple really does know how to make things look nice. You pay for it, but you also make a statement in the process.

The Summary

So those are my inital thoughts on my MacBook. At five days in, I really couldn’t be much happier with it. I will post again in a couple of week and let you know what I think then, but for right now, I might just be turning into a hybrid Mac-PC user. I don’t think I can really say that I’m just PC anymore.

If you have never owned one, check out a Mac. You may just end up loving yours as much as I am beginning to love mine.

Tags: Technology //